shotgun wedding to a bride with a paper ring
by jackiekennedy
Summary: She always gets what she wants in the end; he just gets what other people are willing to give him.


_Honestly, this is a very pointless oneshot. It's just my personal attempt at writing Puck and Quinn again. Inspired and prompted by the shenanigans over at Tumblr, more specifically, pictures of Dianna Agron on a horse and a sweaty & scruffy Mark Salling. Takes place in England, sometime before World War I. Think of it like Anastasia, only if the Romanovs never died and Dimitri was forever her servant boy. So kind of based on Anastasia... except with more horses. And rugged and manly stable hands. Yes.  
_

_I know, I've fully lost my mind right about now. Hopefully, you'll still enjoy. Thanks to Becca (**unspeakabledesire**) for helping me keep calm and carry on.  
_

* * *

If she was anyone else, he wouldn't have said say anything. With his fist clenched, there would be no grandeur exit, just a turn of his heel as he moves past her and walks away – snow-white silence following his steps.

If she was anyone else.

...

He sweeps the back of his palm over his forehead, a trail of sweat glistening under the midday sky. His other hand freely toys a dirty washcloth, his eyes aligned perfectly against the blinding reflection of the scorching sun. He's not as annoyed as he looks – he won't _swear_ by it – but life is tedious, and he's learned to adjust.

There's a noise coming from one of the stalls as he leans in, taking a peak at the distraught animal. The horse neighs softly and prods his arm with the side of his face. It wouldn't surprise him if animals understood humans better than humans do, he thinks as he leans over with a carrot. They know nothing of the games and parlor tricks they play, only the raw truth; they would just see right through them.

He grabs a bucket near the end of stable and fastens his grip before heading off to the nearby stream. He makes it two steps when he sees her – hair up, smiling, feet barely touching the ground. He squints. She's laughing, he sees, a laugh that he's never really heard but already sounds a bit familiar.

It's not enough – it's never enough – but he knows that it's all he's going to get.

And then there's a moment. He thinks he may have actually caught her eye, but like all moments, it passes, and she's quickly being escorted into her carriage. There's something about being unnoticed after all these years that he just can't bring himself to accept.

And there's something about how he finds it impossible to balance wanting her and actually enjoying her.

...

Though the youngest girl of the household, Lady Fabray is and remains the most favorited of the Fabray manor.

Or so it goes.

He doesn't like her. She represent everything he can't stand: pretentious _nouveau riche _who live life with one spoonful after another.

She always gets what she wants in the end, he just gets what other people are willing to give him. Everything he has he's had to fight for. Then he has to fight to keep it.

But even he can't try to deny his adoration for her. She is the type of secret he'll keep to himself. One of those secrets he will take to his grave, tucked into a tight fist until it rots away with him, bleeding into the earth until it becomes another generation of rose bushes and magnolias.

...

He's not that sure about fate sometimes. She can be a tricky little bitch.

But he walks into the stable at the crack of dawn, the forbidden object of his affection standing near one of the empty stalls, clad into nothing but her undergarments with tangled hair falling over her shoulders like spilt honey.

"Morning."

Her shoulders jerk up like a startled bird as she glances over at him, her eyes wide and provoked. "I'm changing!" she blurts sort of indignantly, but he watches the pink creep up on her cheeks with unadulterated amusement.

"In a stable?" he questions, and he places the bucket down at his feet. "I'm Puck."

She blinks twice, raising her dress closer towards her collarbone. He doesn't make any move to hide his smirk. "...I'm Quinn," she states, still staring a bit wide-eyed. "But, also, can you... turn around?"

That's how they first meet. Eighteen years of working on her manor, and he catches her changing in the stable.

Fate, he thinks. Tricky little bitch.

...

He doesn't see her again for another week.

He finds some kind of strange pleasure in the effort she's made to avoid him. It gets him through the next few days as he feels his shoulders shrug against the heat of manual labor.

So he's a little less than surprised when she walks through the stable doors one day, guns blazing and hands on her hips. There's an eyebrow raised as he leans against one of the walls and grins tightly. "Quinn."

"Lady Fabray," she corrects briskly and folds her hands together between the leather of her gloves. "You're the stable hand?"

He shrugs in a way that reads, what are you going to do?

She moves forward a few steps, taking her time as she casually peeks over the stall boxes. He makes no effort to indicate he's waiting for her as he continues along his daily chores, grabbing a sponge and reaching for the towel in his back pocket. He moves towards the edge of the stable and starts to clean one of the walls when he hears the click of her heels and the edge of her dress sweeping the floor.

"I want to learn how to ride a horse," she says clearly, eyes striking through him like a knife.

And he knows that look, he knows what it is to trust someone so much that you'll doubt yourself before you doubt them.

"Fine," he says simply, and that's that.

...

"We're lost."

He doesn't even look back at her as he shakes his head; he's sure his irritation can be read from right where she is. "We are not lost."

"We have been riding around for well over an hour, and you do not seem to have any grasp as to where you are directing us."

"And what makes you think that, Quinn?"

"_Lady_ Fabray," she huffs. "Because you have yet to make some kind indication of stopping anytime soon."

"Stop being impatient, then."

"Am I the only one to be concerned that you've gotten us completely lost?"

"Yes, _Lady Fabray_," he bites, "because you are the only one who _thinks_ we are lost. I know exactly where we are."

"Oh? And where might that be, stable boy?"

"England!"

...

Every now and then he feels it, he feels the hard edges of his day.

His mother used to tell him that broken bones heal back stronger than they were before. But Puck never really believed that – it sounds like something you say to a child in need of consoling. Because if that were true, he thinks, wouldn't we all be purposely breaking our bones in order to make ourselves stronger?

Desire is tenacious. It never actually passes, it just becomes something you learn to live with, something you build your life around.

But that's the thing with desire, it's yours and yours alone – he will never know another's and they will never know his. Yet you still expect everyone to understand it.

Yes, desire is tenacious.

But so is Quinn Fabray.

...

She's a fast learner.

Sort of.

"You're going to fall."

"Well, I'm in a dress!"

"You could always take it off." He feels her imaginary bullet sail through him. "Just be more careful. And keep up."

"One or the other," she mumbles. "I cannot do both."

...

They had a moment, one night.

He was maneuvering the horses back into their stalls when it happened.

She steps out of the stable, eyes towards the sky as she reaches a hand up and smiles like she's sure that she could feel the points of each star against the tips of her fingers.

He's not supposed to hear her when she says, "I don't want to be alone."

And he feels his tongue physically curve as he turns his back towards her to stop himself from saying, "I'd notice you if you were gone."

...

"I'm very desirable," he says one day. He doesn't remember what they're talking about, but he's sure it's somewhat related. "Women want me."

She tilts her head. "Wrong word. You don't _pay_ for women."

A bulletproof argument. Damn her.

...

She finds him another day, late one night with his back resting quietly against a tree. She adjusts the fringe of her hat before settling down next to him without saying a word. Her hands fall to her side and the silence that follows is such a relief that it makes something in Puck settle – realign – in the way water always finds steady level. And Puck doesn't even need to ask her to stay; she just does, sitting next to him, solid and immoveable; as steady as the black sky spread out above them.

And of all the people to find him, he's glad it's Quinn because he's never known anyone who can say everything he needs to hear by saying absolutely nothing.

...

She's doing it wrong – _again – _and he's just not in the best of moods.

He grabs her by the waist and shifts her up towards the stirrup, readjusting her position so she won't fall off and land on one of her ridiculously frilly wardrobe choices. And when her legs hook around the saddle and his hands falls down to her waist, theirs something possessive in him as he hears her heart rattle up her chest.

"My fiance is coming up this afternoon for tea," she says suddenly.

That's all he needs to hear.

But Puck can feel his pulse, the rumble from his heart, and it's like gunfire beneath his skin.

...

He's supposed to be doing this for himself, not to prove her wrong.

He's helping the gardener trim the top of the trees, his stance steady as he casually peers into the windows of the manor. He sees two blond heads, proud and affluent in an almost incestuous manor – like golden Aphrodite and Adonis – and he's not sure whether to laugh or throw something at the window.

And when he finishes the job, he wonders if anyone will ever know him like that. If all of this is just an attempt to understand himself as well as she does.

...

"Look, I don't have much time and as much as I enjoy our back and forth – it's _adorable_, really – I need you to do everything I say. Just this once."

She's talking very fast, already shuffling towards one of the stalls to fetch her horse. He gives her one look before standing, pushing aside the horseshoe he was working on.

"What, no delicious banter today?" she raises a brow.

"It's your world, Lady Fabray," he says matter-of-factly. "I'm just living in it."

...

Life, lemons, lemonade. Sometimes he works inside the manor, usually when they need another hand in the kitchens. Something of the sort. He's helping carry buckets of water to and from the back door, and he hears Quinn calling out from him, her voice like a lighthouse bringing back to shore.

"Puck?" she whispers. "Puck? Puck!"

He doesn't know why he's ignoring her; he just is. Maybe it's revenge.

"Puck? Puck, where are you? Puck – Found you!" she says, a hand on his shoulder and he honestly can't remember the last time someone was pleased to see him.

"Yes, lady?" he says, sarcasm dripping.

But she doesn't say anything. Maybe it's his cue, maybe it was nothing of the sort, but he drops the bucket and grabs her by the waist. Their mouths meet in a hasty, laced kiss, their eyelashes catching as Quinn closes her eyes. Her mouth is soft and warm and fresh, everything Puck has just spent the best part of a day working towards. So when she pulls away, he still follows, pressing his lips onto hers again and again.

His eyelids feel as though they're made of brick, but when he lifts them and meets hers, he knows that it's the bravest thing he has ever done.

And when she backs away suddenly, murmuring some sort of excuse as she sweeps towards the exit and doesn't look back, he sinks in his shoes as watches after her. His heart slows down to a dull beat, but he doesn't care; whatever is left in him, she can have.

...

There's no ritual to it, no attempt to provoke or seduce. It's just him showing her all that he has, all that he is.

They're standing next to a bridge, surrounded by a gathering of trees. Little spots of sunlight poke through the leaves, fighting through to grab hold of them.

"You make me want to jump, Puck," she says softly.

He looks at her. "You make me want to stand still."

...

It's not like he sees them riding off into the sunset or anything.

Fuck this.

...

They love each other.

Her and her fiance. Sam, he thinks his name is. Samuel Evans. Earl of something.

But he knows that they do. He sees it. It's a subdued, quiet sort of love that he thinks is pathetic. Puck rarely uses the word perfect – and he can't even bring himself to use it now because it obviously isn't true – but those two just seem to fit in a way he never will with anyone.

But it's not fair because Puck wants her. He wants her like he wants air and water and blood.

...

"You look like you've just had most of the pretty punched out of you."

It's not true, but she's walking into the stable at two in the morning, her updo in a mess and her fancy taffeta dress clawed through the mud – now he's breaking things without even touching them. She's come from some grand affair probably, but even like this, makeup smudged and limbs limp, she's beautiful, like an old corsage left at the back of the carriage.

When she doesn't say anything, he makes a move towards her, his eyes heavy. "What are you doing here, Quinn?"

"I don't know," she says, it sounds like the noise you make before your last breath.

Her voice sounds strange and Puck wonders, as he does every time something like this happens, if this is it. If this is the moment she gives up on him.

He makes a move to touch her, and for a second, she lets him. She lets him hold her, and he realizes this is what arms are for.

Then suddenly, it's like that small touch is enough to draw the tears from behind her eyes and he wants to press his lips to her somewhere, anywhere. But she pushes him away and starts to shake in a manner that says, _"Get the fuck away from me."_

The thought makes his whole body ache, this raw unending ache that he can feel deep in his heart.

"I know what you think of me," she begins quietly, her voice trembling weakly. "That I'm cold and rigid. Detached. But I'm not. I'm composed a-and I'm... graceful. I just don't give pieces of myself to anyone who'll have them. I am kind. I am... I have a heart – " she stops and shakes her head slightly, her hair falling to her shoulders. "You don't smile very often. Did you know that? You don't. But when you do, it makes me lose my balance. And when you touch me – " she stops again, gathers herself, and continues, "I don't understand, Puck. You don't either. This is it, isn't it? I kept getting it wrong, but I can't get it wrong again."

And he stands there, in the middle of the room, hands at his sides as he stares at her with nothing but awe and something that could be love if they handle it carefully enough.

If she was anyone else, he wouldn't have said say anything. With his fist clenched, there would be no grandeur exit, just a turn of his heel as he moves past her and walks away – snow-white silence following his steps.

If she was anyone else.

"Just come here," he says finally.

They kiss, and it's greedy too – familiar – the taste of her sweet as sherry spilling down his throat. Something, somewhere, registers the smell of her perfume, her softness, those little details he didn't know before.

Then Quinn is uttering expletives into his open mouth between curls of his tongue and rocking her hips back and forth as he fucks her deliberately against the stable walls. And it's like every muscle in his body is melting – they're not even kissing anymore, just pressing their open mouths together and panting_ – _his ribs folding like an accordion with each breath.

And then way he holds her, the way he looks at her, it's as if he's saying, "I'll never leave you, kid. You'll have to leave me because I'll never leave you."

And still, the way his fingers press into her skin isn't possessive. She's grateful, he realizes, and the way her eyes shine says, no one has ever chosen me.

...

("I think I love you," she says.

A look, a smirk, and lip bite. "Tell me when that think turns into a _know_."

His breath skims her lips. "Now," she mutters, like sweet notes over violets. "Now.")

...

Two familiar strangers; all read lonely hearts club.

* * *

_Thank you for reading! Please review!  
_


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